Although there are festivals and activities held in Chincoteague year-round, the biggest draw is the feral ponies, who live across the bay on Assateague Island, in the Chincoteague Wildlife refuge. This fascination is climaxed every year by an annual pony swim the third Thursday in July, drawing crowds of over tens of thousands to watch, and prompting national television coverage. Legends tell of Spanish shipwrecks that brought the ponies to Assateague island. Biologists such as Ronald Keiper believe that the majority of ponies are probably descended from domestic stock put there to graze. The Virginia herd has been flavored by outside genes added to alter or improve the bloodlines. The Chincoteague Wildlife refuge was established in 1943 as a wintering area for migratory waterfowl.The development of wetlands and the black market for waterfowl feathers was pushing many species to the brink of extinction. The refuge protected 9,000 acres of coastal wetlands, plants and wildlife. Initially, the Fish And Wildlife Service was opposed to the ponies, Fertility is encouraged on the Chincoteage Wildlife Refuge. With the pony swim and auction attracting more visitors every year, and foal prices steadily climbing, the sales of each new colt or filly will boost the fire department revenue that much more. Every year is at least as exciting as the one before, as more and more spectators pack tiny Chincoteage Island in hopes of glimpsing the feral ponies swimming across the channel at slack tide.
Chincoteague, Virginia is a small island community on the
eastern shore of the Delmarva peninsula, that historically made its living from the sea. Already world-famous for Chincoteague oysters, Chincoteague saw increased recognition and tourism in 1947 with the publication of Marguerite Henry's book, Misty of Chincoteague.
Now, this seven mile long, narrow island is clustered with tourist-driven businesses, remains packed with tourists during the summer months.
Ronald Kieper, biologist, writes that the pinto coloration apparently came from apparent interbreeding with Shetland ponies in the early 1900's. Around 1939, the fire company brought in twenty mustangs from the west, and in 1978, forty more. Two fine buckskin Spanish Barb stallions were also recently contributed. The addition of the forty mustangs in 1978 was in response to an outbreak of Equine Infectious Anemia that reduced the herd substantially. In 1975, half the herd tested positive, and affected individuals were destroyed three years later to halt the spread of the disease. Mustangs were brought in from the west to revitalize the gene pool, and rebuild the census. But as hardy as these mustangs were, they couldn't adapt to barrier island life, and moist died within the first year. 
and saw them as a non-native nuisance that trampled vegetation and competed with the birds for forage.Fences were erected to restrict their range to five percent of the Virginia section. Almost all of this was salt marsh, which left them with plenty of food, but no way to escape the torment of insects, and no high ground to climb in storms. The Ash Wednesday storm of 1962 flooded their grazing land, and twenty-two of the horses drowned. In 1965, the fences were removed, and the horses were permitted to range more freely.
This web site is an online companion to the book Hoofprints in the Sand: Wild Horses of the Atlantic Coast, serving as a scrapbook of information, observations, and photographs, and providing links to related sites.
Hoofprints in the Sand is published by Eclipse Press. You may order your copy at www.eclipsepress.com or from Amazon.com
